On this map you can see our small farm in the middle of the black circle which roughly represents a 2 km radius around my apiary. To the right you can see the near by town of Hårlev which has domestic flowers within households. All the red circles represent forests and fields which are not used for mono-crop agriculture of wheat, oat and canola. Not many grass fields and if there are some most are used for hay for the horses which has none white clover or dandelions.
The forest parts are beneficial in the spring and start of summer but later nothing much except for honey dew to be found there. The hedgerows are far too poor to offer anything at this time. There are hardly any wild grass fields or meadows except in our forest garden and in the red circle between our farm and the town to the right. There is one wild field to the left too but that is where another beekeeper keeps up to 12 hives so his bees sure take the most out of it. Apparently beekeepers here have problems with bees from other apiaries robbing their colonies. No wonder they do that since there is nothing much else to do to get ready for the winter. I now see why conventional beeks say "you must feed with sugar syrup for the winter". I also now see why they dislike swarming which leads to brood break at the time of Canola flowering. They don't want their bees to have this because this is the only time they can actually make some honey for them selves it seems. Very sad indeed.
Instead of trying to change the environment towards biodiversity we try to adapt to this mono-crop agriculture by feeding sugars and not letting bees express their own biological needs!
Im not sure I can keep many colonies in this locality. Its time to seek for an out apiary somewhere where organic white clover grows.
I have read in the newspaper today an interesting article stating that "Danish Government is Slaughtering its Nature". So true once you see the fact with your own eyes. I mean for me it is easy to see how poor this environment looks since I have kept bees in parts of Sweden within a bio-diverse environment.
From the article; " The wild nature in Denmark has way too little space and is starved by the intense use of pesticides and fertilizers. It is so bad that a large part of wild flowers and butterflies are disappearing. Denmark is in need for wild nature like never before", sais biologist Michael Stoltze.
How about a follow-up letter to the editor pleading with people to leave "A Patch for Pollinators" when mowing their lawns, establishing a "No Mow Zone." You could offer to take pictures of it to highlight on your blog. That's what I'm thinking about doing. Stick a sign in the patch with a big "Bee Friend" on it.
ReplyDeleteI just moved recently to Denmark and am Swedish not danish so politically I cant do much. Plus, I still don't know many people locally. So far my feeling is that people choose to be ignorant to what is really happening. Its in our nature to look the other way if disaster is on the way. We think that if we dont look at it everything will be ok.
ReplyDeleteSome Danes sure are aware of the issue. Some already mentioned in the news that we must stop mowing the sides of roads, but the traffic law sais it has to be done for security reasons (roll eyes). We also live in a liberal country and people have the freedom to live without grassy areas if the fish. Many householders use Round Up to kill weeds and have only grass. Many lay down concrete around their houses to totally eliminate weed issues.
Farmers only focus to get more land so hedgerows are ONLY GOOD because they act as wind breaks. If we had no strong winds they would sure remove those too :( Our societies perspective is totally screwed it seems. I feel ashamed to call myself a human honestly. We seem to suffer greatly from ignorance and greed. But I sure will try to do my best to inspire people towards bee friendly action in form of letting things grow wild and planting for the bees.
Our problem is that we are trying to fix the issues surrounding mono-crop agriculture. We can't fix something which was always having huge issues which had to be fixed with lots of irrigation, fertilizing and spraying with deadly coctails. I mean our politicians rather poison our ground water with pesticides then encourage small scale organic farming based on biodiversity.
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